Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/365

 regard he betrayed something of the practical temperament which is traceable in the conduct of the affairs of his later life. It was doubtless with the calculated aim of exploiting public taste to the utmost that he unceasingly adapted, as his genius dictated, themes which had already, in the hands of inferior writers or dramatists, proved capable of arresting public attention.

The professional playwrights retained no legal interest in their plays after disposing of the manuscript to a theatrical manager, and it was customary for the manager to invite extensive revision at the hands of others before a play was produced on the stage, and again whenever it was revived. Shakespeare doubtless gained his earliest experience as a dramatist by revising or rewriting behind the scenes plays that his manager had purchased. Possibly not all his labours in this direction have been identified. In a few cases his alterations were slight, but as a rule his fund of originality was too abundant to restrict him, when working as an adapter, to mere recension, and the results of most of his labours in that capacity are entitled to rank among original composition.

The exact order in which Shakespeare's plays were written depends largely on conjecture. External evidence is accessible in only a few cases, and, although always worthy of the utmost consideration, is not invariably conclusive. The date of publication rarely indicates the date of composition. Only sixteen of the thirty-seven plays commonly assigned to Shakespeare were published in his lifetime, and it is questionable whether any were published under his supervision. But subject-matter and metre both afford rough clues to the period in his career to which each play may be referred. In his early plays the spirit of comedy or tragedy appears in all its simplicity, but as his powers grew to maturity he depicted life in its complexity, and portrayed with masterly insight all the gradations of human sentiment, and the mysterious workings of human passion. Comedy and tragedy are gradually blended; and his work finally developed a pathos such as could only have come of ripe experience. Similarly the metre undergoes emancipation from established rule and becomes flexible and irregular enough to respond to every phase of human feeling. In the blank verse of the early plays a pause is strictly observed at the close of each line, and rhyming couplets are frequent. Gradually the verse overrides such artificial restrictions; rhyme largely disappears; the pause is varied indefinitely; extra syllables are, contrary to strict metrical law, introduced at the end of lines, and at times in the middle; recourse is more frequently made to prose (cf., Shakespeare's Versification, 1854; , Difference in Shakespeare's Versification at different Periods of his Life, 1857). Fantastic and punning conceits which abound in early work are rarely accorded admission to later work. At the same time allowance must be made for ebb and flow in Shakespeare's artistic progress. Early work occasionally anticipates features that become habitual to late work, and late work at times embodies traits that are mainly identified with early work. No exclusive reliance in determining the precise chronology can be placed on the merely mechanical tests afforded by tables of metrical statistics. The chronological order can only be deduced with any confidence from a consideration of all the internal characteristics as well as the known external history of each play. The premisses are often vague and conflicting, and no chronology hitherto suggested receives at all points universal assent.

There is no external evidence that any piece in which he had a hand was produced before the spring of 1592. No play by him was published before 1597, and none bore his name on the title-page till 1598. But his first essays have been with confidence allotted to 1591. To ‘Love's Labour's Lost’ may reasonably be assigned priority in point of time of all Shakespeare's dramatic productions. Internal evidence alone indicates the date of composition, and proves that it was an early effort, but the subject-matter suggests that its author had already enjoyed extended opportunities of surveying London life and manners, such as were hardly open to him in the very first years of his settlement. ‘Love's Labour's Lost’ embodies keen observation of contemporary life in many ranks of society, both in town and country, while the speeches of the hero Biron clothe much sound philosophy in masterly rhetoric. Its slender plot stands almost alone among Shakespeare's plots in that it is not known to have been borrowed. The names of the chief characters are drawn from those of the leaders in the civil war in France, which was in progress between 1589 and 1594, and was anxiously watched by the English public. Contemporary projects of academies for disciplining young men; fashions of speech and dress current in fashionable circles; recent attempts on the part of Elizabeth's government to negotiate with the czar of Russia; the inefficiency of rural constables and the pedantry of